"I like this," David said after his third sip. He leaned in to whisper it in Alec's ear, nuzzled his neck.
"I can tell," Alec said and motioned for another.
Halfway through a play about sheep and miracles David leaned over and rested his head on Alec's shoulder. The world was swimming around him, a dizzy blur. Alec felt so good, so solid.
And he smelled nice and warm and like...like he always did. Like himself, his own special Alec smell. It was wonderful. "I wish we were home," he said, and bit Alec's earlobe gently, licked his neck.
"Hey," Alec said quietly and when Alec turned toward him David kissed him, open-mouthed and eager.
"Mining trash," someone hissed behind them and David reached back with one hand, let his fingers brush against the knee of the man who'd spoken. He heard a crack and then a gasp, a whimper. Then Alec was tugging him up, hurrying them through the crowd.
"What were you thinking?" he said when they were on the street, turning back to look behind them.
"I was thinking about you," David said, and put a hand on Alec's shoulders. They were framed under his hands. Alec looked at him and the worried look on his face faded, his eyes flaring hot.
"You and me." He slid his hands down Alec's chest, leaned in and kissed him. Then he moved his hands lower.
"We're in the middle of the street," Alec said and then gasped, pulled him closer.
"I don't care," David said. "I want you."
Later and forever what he would remember about that afternoon was the way the sun and the sky had swirled together overhead, a color he could remember but would never see again, the cool stone of the arch he and Alec were pressed against, the dark brown of Alec's eyes staring into his when David pushed into him. The sound of Alec saying his name over and over, voice wild and pleading.
Alec was quiet that night and again the next. He didn't touch him at all, kissed him in the evenings quickly and then slept carefully curled away from him.
The third night David got up when Alec fell asleep. He climbed out of bed and sat on the floor, stared out the window looking up at the stars. He heard Alec wake up and roll over when the street lamps outside were starting to flicker, burning low. There was a sharp intake of breath and then Alec's voice saying "David?" softly, almost hopefully.
"Down here," David said and wondered if the sigh Alec made at the sound of his voice was happy or sad. He didn't know what had changed, what Alec was thinking. He wanted to. "Come sit with me."
"I--all right," Alec said. In the moonlight he was all shadows and he sat down near him but not next to him. David moved closer, reached out and put a hand on Alec's leg when he started to move back.
"You have to sit here if you want to see the stars."
"David--"
"I like it when you say my name."
Alec was silent for a moment. Then he reached out and put his hand over David's and pushed it away, as if he couldn't bear his touch. "Except it's not your name."
"It--"
"It isn't. You--people like you have other names. Titles. And we both know I'm not ever someone you were supposed to meet, much less--"
"But I did meet you."
"Always with the obvious," Alec said, and smiled at him then, a strained smile.
"I want to be with you," David said softly. "I'm not sorry about it."
"Of course you aren't. You aren't sorry because people like you don't ever have to be sorry." His voice was bitter now, full of something past the two of them.
"But you do?"
Alec didn't reply. David wrapped his arms around his knees, sat silent, curling himself up tight and staring fixedly at the sky. His fingers were cold. He didn't know what to do, to say, and wished he did.
They sat that way for a long time and then Alec sighed. "I want to be with you too," he said quietly and moved closer, hesitated and then put a careful arm around him. "Tell me what stars you're looking at."
David looked at him, then back at the stars. "That's the Loom," he said, and pointed at a bright cluster in the middle of the sky.
"What are you talking about? That's the Bear."
"No, no, I know it's the Loom. See how it forms the shape of one? With the hump and the--"
"Have you ever seen a loom?"
"No."
Alec laughed, pulled him close. David smiled up at the sky.
"Look," Alec said. "See the curve there? That's the bear's back. Have you ever seen a bear?"
"No. Well, in pictures."
"Figures," Alec said and told him a story about a bear who'd ended up in the stars. David listened, nestled in Alec's arms.
The next morning people woke up and found flowers blooming even though the trees were still bare and there was a chill in the air.
David picked some of the flowers and put them in a glass. They made Alec sneeze violently but when David went to throw them away Alec stopped him, one hand on his arm.
"I can tell you like the damn things," he said. "Leave them."
"Really?"
"Yes," Alec said sourly, and sneezed again. David pulled him close, watched Alec's eyes melt from narrowed and suspicious to something else, something sweeter.
"I'm happy," David said. "All the time. It's amazing. I think of you and I want to smile. Do I make you want to smile?"
"No," Alec said, and kissed him. David could feel the curve of his mouth against his own.
"Want some?" Bash said.
Alec shook his head. Even in the guttering flicker of minelight he could see the things in Bash's eyes swimming crazily, flipping and twisting so hard he thought he might be seeing Bash leave in a bag before the end of the day.
"Dragons," Bash whispered to him and whistled low under his breath. Alec grunted and swung his pick. The rock shuddered but didn't split. Beside him Bash threw up. "Inside an egg," he said afterwards. "Very yellow." Then he threw up again.
"You sure you don't want some?" Bash said when he was done. Alec thought about it for a second but then shook his head again. Wormwood wouldn't help, not like it should. Now any time he took it all he saw was David and he was everywhere already. Behind his eyes when he closed them, right around the corner no matter what he thought about. And always there every night, waiting for him like he didn't ever want to leave. Touching him…he swung the pick again.
The rock chipped, but only enough to spit fragments at him. He got most of them off his face before they could scratch deep enough to draw blood.
"Heigh ho!" he heard the worker at the top of the shaft sing as he'd finally gotten the rock to give way a bit. Foreman coming.
"Up," he hissed to Bash who'd slumped over his rock, tracing patterns in the air with one finger.
His eyes had started to bleed a little.
"Lohoheigh!" Bash giggled, but he got up and swung his pick. It hit the rock at the perfect angle, cracking it all the way open. Alec felt the shudders of the split travel up his own arms, making them ache more than usual. He picked up the gleaming stuff inside, pressed it into Bash's hands.
When he didn't move Alec punched him in the face. Bash stared at him and the things in his eyes rolled over, almost faded back but then didn't, twitched and pushed even harder.
"Keep your head down," Alec told him and shoved him in the direction of the collection bin.
"Frogs," Bash said, but patted him on the shoulder as he left. Alec sighed and swung his pick again.
The foreman came too soon. He'd heard the call but had hoped, foolishly, that it wasn't as close as it sounded, that he'd have a bit more time. He took another swing at the rock and waited.
He didn't have to wait long. The foreman looked at him and shook his head, then said, "Where's Bash?"
"Got a vein."
"Three for him this week. How many for you again?"
"None," Alec said shortly and swung his pick again.
The foreman put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed down hard, stilling his arm mid-swing.
"What was that?"
Alec gritted his teeth. His arm was screaming, the foreman's fingers pressing into every sore and torn joint. "None yet, sir."
"Well then, best try harder," the foreman said and squeezed one last time, hard enough for Alec to feel his arm pop, the shoulder slide back and out of place. His first day back the foreman had come and found him as he was waiting for the cart down with everyone else, called him aside with a grin of utter hatred marking his face and said, "So you decided working here with…what was it you said? Oh yes, an imbecilic idiot of a foreman. Decided that wouldn't be so bad, have you?" He'd grinned when Alec mumbled something and said, "So how's the arm?" motioning for someone to hold him down while he'd twisted it out of place. When he was done he'd pulled him up by it, yanking so hard Alec saw black yellow spots everywhere, and then slapped him once, twice, hard enough for the spots to bleed away and for the mine to blur back into view. "Too bad your arm didn't have a chance to heal up proper while you were gone," the foreman had said.
"Guess we'll put you on half pay till you heal up again." Then he'd sent him down.
"Oh," the foreman said now, tongue clicking against his teeth, a sound Alec dreaded and hated.
"I almost forgot. How's your bit of stuff?"
He swung his pick again. Bright hot pain all down his arm. He pictured the foreman's head splitting open.
"Not as nice as what had you before, I hear," the foreman said, and cuffed him on the back of the head.
When Alec didn't reply he did it again. His head hit the rock and it finally split wide open. There was a vein inside, a bold bright purple.
"Well now," the foreman said. "There's progress. I guess you just have to use your head." He laughed and walked away. Alec gritted his teeth and pushed himself up, sang out "Heigh ho!" to signal that the foreman was moving on. His voice sounded fine.
***
Alec would only talk about leaving the mines late at night, when it was too dark for David to see his face. During the day he never said anything and if David mentioned them Alec would just shrug and turn away, fall silent like there was nothing to say. It didn't matter. David heard dreams in Alec's voice at night and always thought about when he first met him, about what Alec had said about where he'd been. About singing, about trying, about what people saw when they looked at him.
"I'd love to never see another rock again," Alec would sometimes say and then he'd always laugh and add, "but then I haven't done very well at getting away from them so far." Sometimes when David reached for him Alec would sigh, shift into his arms. But usually he'd say, "One day, maybe," and pull back slightly, talk about going far away.
He never mentioned taking David with him, never seemed to weave him into his dreams.
"I'd like to see that," David said one night, Alec's hand tight in his. Alec's voice had been softer than usual when he talked of leaving, of wandering across a desert where a sea used to be to unknown lands past that, not sad but just quiet, and when David had reached for him he'd kissed him gently, whispered his name.
"Maybe you will," Alec said. "But not with me."
"Why not? We could--"
"No. This won't last. Everything you think you feel--it won't last."
"Why?"
"It just doesn't," Alec said, and even though he was still holding him David knew he was somewhere else, somewhere he'd never be. "It never does."
***
Alec helped carry Thomas out at the end of the day. He was talking a little as they reached the outside, a few slurred words full of pain. Alec fanned his face with one hand while Bash poured cold water on him and muttered a prayer. It didn't do any good. "Got three little ones at home,"
Bash said a few moments later and Alec nodded, closed Thomas's eyes. Bash put him in a bag.
As they were taking him down the hill Bash got his shoulder caught by a messenger horse, moved too slowly taking Thomas to the side of the path for the rider. "King's business," the rider said, "get that trash out of the way," and then the horse's hooves were flashing and Bash was underneath, the foreman saying he was sorry and was there anything His Majesty's servant wanted, needed?
"You know," he said after the rider had passed, turning around to grin at Alec as he and Bash struggled with Thomas, Bash's arm hanging awkwardly and his face ghost white with pain, "He came out once after you left. Wanted to look at a perfect blue we'd found. Never asked about you, not one word. Just like you were nothing to him."
When they reached the city and Thomas's body had been taken to the burning house Bash looked at him and said, "If there was ever a day for forgetting."
Alec nodded. And later, when Bash looked at him with dark swimming eyes dripping brown-red tears as he sang a laughing lament for his arm, he said, "Share?" and surrounded himself with burning smoke, swallowed it down till the world dissolved around him, till he couldn't think about anything or anyone.
***
Alec didn't come home when night fell. David waited and waited and finally went and knocked on Gladys' door when the streetlamps had been lit, long after the sounds of returning footsteps had stopped.
He knocked till his knuckles ached and Gladys gave him a hard look when she opened the door a crack, said "What is it?" in a toneless voice. From inside a deep voice David didn't know called out, "I'm not paying you to chat with the neighbors."
"I don't know where Alec is," he said.
She sighed, a short exasperated sound. "The way you were pounding on the door I thought it was an emergency," she said, and then turned away, said, "Won't be but a moment, I swear," to whoever was in the room with her, voice honey-sweet and hard.
"I have to go," she said when she turned back to him and then coughed, doubling over with her hand curling tightly around the doorframe.
"But--"
"I'm sure he's fine," she said impatiently, straightening up and rubbing her hand across her mouth, leaving a faint brown red trail behind. "Go on now, and don't come back tonight. Once everyone comes home I don't have time to talk. Understand?"
David shook his head but she'd already closed the door.